I will unscientifically second that a large enough pot is better than a butchered and burlaped.

I'm growing quite fond of four foot tall transplants for a mixture of instant gratification vs ease of digging, vs resilience vs time to recover from transplant shock.

My favorite for myself is still the foot long bare rooters.

The root system of B&B trees will redevelop (including large roots). The redeveloped root system will be somewhat different than a "natural" root system, but not as different as you propose. Even species with taproots (many of the oaks for example) can redevelop a root system that approximates the root system of a naturally grown tree.

With larger specimens, that can be fairly easily handled as B&B, the corresponding pot-grown rootball would be massive and not practical to deal with. Bare-rooting (which would be a near necessity) might require heavy equipment for lifting and lots and lots of work. Even attempts at using a "happy-medium" sized pot would have some real negative issues with large, mature potbound roots. Removing those would be the equivalent of B&Bing the tree to start with.

The necessity of B&B depends on the size of the tree, but pot-grown nursery stock is just not a practical option for the larger stuff.

BTW, this topic presents a great reason to start off with small trees, when possible.

no fair brandon.. taking two answers.. before the rest got into the game ...

i second your second ...

avoid the whole mess.. and buy smaller.. so you can bare root it out of a pot .. prune and fix whatever root problems there are .. and move on with life.. its and yours ...

its the 'instant gratification' versus 'whats best' dichotomy ... and that would be.. whats best for the tree.. rather than you ...

i am thinking.. its the same on the rootmaker issue .. i dont care what you do.. but if you insist on buying a 10 foot tree .. IN A POT ... i dont care what pot you use.. it should have 20 feet of roots .. under the twice as big underground theory ... and unless you have a 6 inch tall by 8 foot wide pot.. there is no where for roots to go.. but round and round ... just like the wheels on the bus ... [yeah.. the math doesnt work.. lol ... you get the idea .. i hope]

the analogy is.. you all want to adopt 25 year old adults.. rather than babes ... and then you want to complain.. that the 25 year old.. has all his roots twisted in a knot ... well.. its because you werent there to nurture him from a babe ...
buy smaller .. adopt younger ...

ken

Hmm. Well, Joe, my thought is, if an uprooted tree that was planted that long ago appears to have never established many new roots, there was something else wrong.

Ken makes a great point. In fact, a smaller container tree, say under 3 gallons (maybe a little bigger), you can often uncoil circling roots and not even have to cut them off, in my experience, and what you do have to cut is much less of a percentage of root area, than what is lost when a tree is dug and balled/burlapped.

I kinda agree. Sometimes I can't help myself and buy a larger potted tree, or dug tree, and they take longer to get bigger than a small one planted the same year. I start oaks in 2 l milk jugs, once in a great while I pot on to 3 gallon, then sometimes buy a tree or two for a treat. The ones I buy are usually 4 feet, and dug. The 4 footers take much longer to get big than the 2 footers or the potted ones. 5 years on, there is a noticeable difference, 10 years later still some difference, 20 years, no, all about the same. Survival in the woods though is better for a smaller potted one versus a larger dug one.

Hairmetal's answer suggests that those tipped-over specimens you're seeing had issues beyond type of transplant method used, and I agree. It is far from true to say that transplanted trees 'never' regrow the big root types of the naturally grown tree. I'd say that they almost always do, and then for some unknown reason, a few don't. These then are the ones you see fail. Something else was going on in these instances.

+oM

ditto the advice about smaller trees. Prefer to plant sizes from 18" - 3'.
It may be there is not a good hard and fast best method to plant the larger sizes of trees.

I have seen trees grown in situ that have never developed the so called typical root system. it's not the growing or transplant system that is used that determines how the root system establishes. water tables, soil profile changes, bedrock, these are at least as important as anything else. and together, they are far more important.

I've seen trees grown I assume from seed that never developed a "typical" branched root system. so do I then say that growing from seed is a prediction of failure? I guess there are many hurricanes that would agree with this.

now for the part that is going to mess with folks.

3 gal is a shrub size. somewhat dependent on species, 2" is small. I do deal with a few trees as small as 7g, but these are limited to very few species/cultivars. I deal with more bareroot trees in a 2" caliper than I do 7g containers.

knowing how long a plant has been in any particular size of pot is more important than what size it is. for instance, a 6' crab received bareroot and put in a 10g container in the spring is going to present few problems if purchased and planted that fall, even the next spring. or a sugar maple received 2 1/2" bareroot and put in a 40g can. get into two and half years in a pot, and yeah, there are going to be issues. for that matter, the some time frame presents the same problems, from a quart Anderson tree band on up.

After reading Strobiculate's post, it occurs to me that this conversation may not be well defined (or at least that I may have taken it somewhat differently than it was meant to be). Joeschmoe, when you are talking about "containerized" trees, did you really mean container-grown or did you mean containerized (dug and placed into a container for transport/sale) trees? If containerized, how do you propose that they would be any different than B@B stock, as to how the root system would redevelop?

I would rather not have a bare-root tree. I personally haven't had good luck with them. A lot of the time too many roots are trimmed off, Arbor day has done that in the past, hope it isn't continuing. I would say 2-3 ft root bag grown whips have been best in my experience.